pop/cafe/0_0 (from book in progress)

It was a dim drenched November morning when I reached the cafe. There were only a handful of minutes left to order a drink and sit in faux-casual suspension for the rendezvous. I felt a lump in my throat as I fantasized kicking off the encounter 'in control' by appearing calmly grounded; I would be sat, waiting, disconnected from time and space, an eternal god for whom mortals blipped into existence and hurriedly buzzed about trying to impress. Unfortunately, the actual heavens had decided to unload a cloud on my head a hundred metres back and I was now irreversibly timestamped at Human O’clock. Maybe the lump was acid reflux.

I ordered a tall coffee; black with +10mg of caffeine. I was feeling pretty damn professional. I imagined the embarassment of choking on the bitter taste and having a panic attack from feeling my heart race. Cunningly, I added a Snickers syrup percentage high enough to hide the taste but low enough to not smell like a children’s birthday cake.

Steaming cup in wrinkled chilly hand, I found my way back to a table equidistant from the rear wall and the only other patron in the cafe; I noticed they were reading a slim book filled only with AR markers; I dreamed up all manner of depravity they could be publicly indulging in. To ensure my dominance in the meeting I decided it best to be facing the entrance so that I could sit stoically through their social ordeal as they made their way to meet me beneath my unflinching gaze. This unfortunately meant that I was now sat facing the book reader like a distant goddamn mirror; I resigned to the presumption that they were otherwise engaged in inspecting a miniature gymnastic orgy of sex and/or violence between bites of their panini.

I popped the lid on my mug and found the coffee had come out with a Mars logo’d foamy head and branded straw. I scowled at the machine as I sucked up the nougaty cloud and stored the straw in my inside pocket. ‘Not very fucking professional’ I mouthed as I returned my gazed to the door; a faceful of tuna and cheese smiled politely and expelled a tiny humored gust out of their nose before turning a page and returning to their literary perversion.

I subconsciously tapped my finger and thumb together, looked at the clock on my ocular overlay, and tapped again to dismiss it, forgetting what it had said. I checked again, 10:58. There’s not a lot you can do in 2 minutes, especially if you’re aiming to look cool. ‘I suppose I could start doing something’, I thought, ‘and then I’ll be busy with my own shit when they arrive’. Only mildly panicking, I tapped and scrolled around on my thumb until I had a pad of paper in front of me; there was a warped mountain of paper in the middle where my coffee was so I moved in out of the way and reset. I took out my pen and started to take some notes. Tensions eased til I realised I was using the straw and heard a quiet snort in the distance. I swapped the straw for my pen and continued.

Arrived 10:55 ready for contact

Possible pervert at 12 o’clock

  -AR hiding likely a dirty comic as opposed info of interest

“Oh, I think you’d be surprised.” Holy fucking shit, the pervert was stood over my table!

My eyes darted between the notes and the pervert as he pulled out a chair, “How are you? How did you?” - I looked at his table then back to where he was now, “How did you?”.

“Not bad for 60, right?” he sat down and made the unmistakable sound of a man who enjoyed doing so.

A notification beeped.

“Eleven, on the dot”, the 60-year old smiled.

For a brief moment my face sagged and my mouth hung open before I quickly gathered myself into an unconvincing inquisitive expression. “Ah, so you’re my contact. How did you read my notes?”

“Oh it’s just part of some standard equipment. It’s mostly for reading this gobbledygook”, he waved his book in one hand as he popped the last piece of his sandwich in his mouth with the other, “itsth all uncrupthed dynamacry tho”, he swallowed, thank fuck, “so we’ve got hardware and software synced with services that tell us the page and paragraph and then, well, we just get on with it”, he closed the book, “But the fun side effect is: the over-engineered tools included can intercept all sorts of shit.” I noticed the cover of the book wasn’t far from the debauchery I had imagined. The spy shrugged. “Speaking of which, your left eye’s overlay is a couple months out of date. I’m surprised you haven’t been noticing a difference between them; headaches, double vision?”

“No”, I shook my head but then visibly considered things as I closed and opened alternating eyes. “Ha ha ha!”, the spy slammed the table. “Here”, he flipped through his book, then looked up at my left eyeball through his bushy grey eyebrows as he tapped his meaty sausage fingers on a tiny abstract marker, “anything?”. I noticed his finger didn’t always land on the actual marker so started to wonder if he wasn’t just making all this stuff up, either at my expense or because he was insane.

My left eye beeped, then my right, then both together. My sight suddenly felt a little sharper. I couldn’t distinguish between now and a moment ago but something had definitely cleared up. “Huh”, I looked at my hand then the bushy eyebrows then back at my hand, “That’s weird; everything’s setup to automatically update.”

The spy did an accurate albeit sarcastic impersonation of my inquisitive expression, “Maybe you were hacked?”. He couldn’t help but smile then a laugh burst out as he slammed the table again causing my coffee to bounce. He let out a high pitched giddy sigh, “I don’t know why but I like you. You’re no trouble.”

“Well”, I looked at his book of tricks, considered the immensity of the secrets he wasn’t telling me, and knew I was probably in a better position than I deserved to be. I swung my head down to the side and up at the spy as I comically drew out “fairrrr enough!”

The spy nodded several times microscopically as he looked at my cup, “Snickers aye?”, he looked at me with wide eyes and a serious expression. Maintaining eye contact, he leaned towards me and whispered “Good man.”